A heritability-based comparison of methods used to cluster 16S rRNA gene sequences into operational taxonomic units.

ABSTRACT: A variety of methods are available to collapse 16S rRNA gene sequencing reads to the operational taxonomic units (OTUs) used in microbiome analyses. A number of studies have aimed to compare the quality of the resulting OTUs. However, in the absence of a standard method to define and enumerate the different taxa within a microbial community, existing comparisons have been unable to compare the ability of clustering methods to generate units that accurately represent functional taxonomic segregation. We have previously demonstrated heritability of the microbiome and we propose this as a measure of each methods' ability to generate OTUs representing biologically relevant units. Our approach assumes that OTUs that best represent the functional units interacting with the hosts' properties will

SUBMITTER: Jackson MA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5012273 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature